look for the girl with the broken smile
by it's friday night
Summary: if i sang this loud enough, would you sing it back to me?


She links her pinky with his index finger. "Maybe we were destined to be together," she says. He doesn't say anything, just slowly moves his fingers away from hers.

.

He smashes his lips so hard against her mouth that she thinks he knocks out a couple of her teeth. He pushes her backwards, knocking her into tables and tripping over things as he does and she doesn't know why he's being so different tonight and she's about to say something when her back collides with the cool metal of his RV. His hands slide down her sides until he reaches her waist, his fingers finding a home in the belt loops of her shorts. He pulls her closer and she twists and spirals her hands through his hair and she thinks that maybe this is what it's like to be completely and totally engrossed in someone.

She pulls away, "Beck-"

He grazes his lips against hers and mumbles a soft 'shh' before they're at it again.

Later that night, when she's pressed against his body in the dark of the night, she thinks she feels him press lips against the warm skin of her shoulder and whisper, "never leave" a couple of times, but she's in the land in between sleep and wake, so she shrugs it off and closes her eyes.

.

They're tangled up in his sheets watching Full House and she wishes that every day could be like this, could be effortless. She grabs the remote and presses mute. She sits there in silence, trying to find the courage to say what's been on her mind since this whole thing started.

"Hey, it was just getting to the good part!"

"What are we? What's our status?"

"Friends," he takes her hand and smiles, "Best friends."

"We're more than that though, aren't we?"

"We can't be."

"Why not?"

He's silent.

"Is it because of her?"

"Yeah."

They stare at each other for a bit until she un-mutes the TV and walks out the door, balling the sheets up in his lap and walking out of the RV. He watches Michelle for a while and then hits the power button and walks out the door, sitting on the steps of the RV beside Cat.

"How'd you know I'd be here?"

"I know you."

.

They go to McDonalds and she gets an Oreo McFlurry and he gets lemonade with ice and they sit in one of the little rooms of the PlayPlace and she's taking so long with her McFlurry, savoring each spoonful that the paper cup gets soft and the ice cream leaks all over the room. She looks over at him and watches him with his eyes closed, singing something under his breath that she can't understand so she shuts her eyes tight and tries to concentrate on his words, until he stops singing that is.

"Uhm, Cat...are you okay? Your face is all red."

She quickly opens her eyes, "Oh, yeah, I'm fine."

They sit in silence for a while, Cat finishing off her McFlurry, Beck playing with the straw of his now empty cup.

"Hey, Beck? What was that song you were singing earlier?"

"You heard that?" He smiles and sings the rest of the song, louder so that she can hear it this time.

.

She really hates this. She hates how he's her prince in the night and her greatest enemy in the day. Her mind is telling her to leave him in the dust and her heart tells her to stay because he makes her heart sing. She can't deal with her conflicting emotions and she wonders how he deals with his. How he deals with making honey bitter and vinegar sweet because really, he doesn't make things plain and simple and real. He twists everything up and messes with people's heads, especially Cat's.

They're at the lake twenty miles away from L.A. because he says the stars shine so much brighter here and he slips his fingers between the spaces in hers.

"You make me think," she says.

"Really? About what?"

"Why I let you use me."

"I'm not using you."

"Then why do you keep doing this to me?"

"I'm not doing anything to you except for making you happy."

She lets go of his hand and it's dead quiet except for a few crickets here and there.

"I'm anything but happy, Beck. You make me feel like I'm flying one minute and then like crying the next."

"Say the word and I'll leave you alone. We don't have to remember anything that's happened between us."

She looks at him and she thinks he looks different, more pure and honest under the twinkling night sky and she wants to punch him in the face and then kiss it better for making her like this. She wants to tell him to buzz off and never speak to her again and just forget that they ever had a once upon a time romance, but she can't force herself to do it, so she just looks up at the moon and wonders if maybe there really is a man on the moon, looking down at her and shouting, "Stupid girl!" Maybe there is and she can't hear him. She wishes she could.

.

The first time she ever really feels jealous of Tori is on a Thursday.

Or, more importantly, Cat's 18th birthday.

.

The gang is finishing singing Happy Birthday to Cat and then she's cutting into the cake that Beck got her and she squeals and wraps her arms around his neck when she sees it's red velvet with a layer of ice cream with little crushed up Oreo's inside. She cuts her slice and then hurries to the table to eat, forgetting about cutting slices for the others.

She looks around for Beck, to thank him for throwing her such a wonderful party when she spots him in the corner of the room with Tori. He's smiling and she's laughing her head off and Cat thinks she sees their fingers inch towards each other. She shrugs it off because really, it's her 18th birthday and she's finally free now. But she can't shake off the feeling that she's ruining their happiness. She can't shake off the feeling that she's a homewrecker.

.

She sneaks into his RV at 3 AM because she'd just finished watching a scary movie and all her family was gone, went to some three day festival downtown, so she's scared to be all alone. She closes the door quietly and she notices the TV is still on, but he's asleep. She pulls off her jeans and pulls the covers back on his bed to get in with him, and then she sees Tori, fully clothed pressed up against Beck, sound asleep. She stares at her for a while, just watching her chest rise and fall and then Tori stirs in her sleep and her arm falls across Beck's waist and all Cat can see is red and all she can feel is her throat getting tighter and tighter, so she counts to ten and backs up against the wall of the RV and slides down, because really, she felt this coming all along.

Then, "Cat?"

She looks up at a drowsy Beck. "Hi," she mumbles.

"Cat, what are you doing here?"

"I got scared."

"Why are you crying?"

She touches her face, "It's nothing. I just yawned."

He doesn't believe her, but he ignores it. He knows she'll talk when he's not expecting it. "What're you doing here?"

"I...I don't know."

"Cat-"

"Bye," she hurries and puts her jeans back on before rushing out the door and while she closes it, she can hear Tori mumble, "Beck?"

.

"Run away with me," she tells him. They're sitting on the roof of his RV after going to the fair with Tori. Cat's eating cotton candy and her fingers are sticky and Beck's got a funnel cake and he wishes he'd never gotten involved with her, but now that he's in, he can't pull himself away. Her eyes are like a trance and her little voice is like fairies whispering in his ear and her touch is like silk and he loves it. He loves the emotions she gives him, not her.

"Cat...we can't."

"But we can, Beck. We can run away to Boca and change our names and get married and have kids and a pet monkey, maybe. I want you to be with me, Beck. You can learn."

"Learn what?"

"To love me."

"I do love you, just not in the way you want me to."

They sit in silence for a while, then Beck says, "I would run away with you."

And then he kisses her and her lips are sticky and she tastes like cotton candy and magic. He thinks he's in love with her when he tastes magic because magic isn't a taste. It's a hobby, it's Harry Potter, it's not real. But they're not real either, so he brushes the feeling off.

.

Often times, she'll find herself wearing her favorite dress made of long flowy mesh and silk that makes her look like a disastrous fairy princess and twirl around in slow circles, her arms straight up, eyes closed. It's in these times that she fantasizes about being a princess and living in a big castle with maids and secret passageways and people to feed her grapes. She's humming the tune of some old Disney movie and she opens her eyes and Beck's there, sitting on her window seat, just staring at her.

"Is this real life?" she asks.

He smiles and if she died right then, she would've been perfectly fine and then, "Yeah, of course it is."

"Then how'd you get in here?"

"Open window."

There's a pause, then Cat sits beside him, "Why are you here?"

"I wanted to talk to you...about us."

"What about us?"

"I think we should stop what we've been doing."

"Why? Did I do something wrong?"

"No, it's just...I love Tori."

"But you love me more, right?"

Silence.

"You're only doing this because you don't want her to be jealous of us, right?"

Silence.

"Beck, you love me right?"

She count ten beats and then, "I care about you."

"That's not enough."

"I wish it was."

.

After Beck leaves, Cat kind of just sits on her windowsill for a while. Then she counts the number of flowers on her wallpaper, how many she posters she has, and then she just counts as high as she can. Once she's counted everything in her room twice, she sits on her bed and cries. She doesn't know why she's crying, but she just knows that her heart hurts a lot and she can't feel her legs, so when she stands up to get some tissue, she falls and then just kind of lays there and cries some more.

.

Cat calls him after ignoring him for four consecutive weeks. Well, technically it was three and half considering she had to talk to him when she visited Andre without knowing he was there, but she doesn't count that since she only said a few words to him before she left after only staying for twenty minutes. She's standing by a window, waiting for him to answer his phone.

"Hello?"

"Hi."

"Cat?"

"Hello, Beck."

"Cat, wh-"

She cuts him off and starts singing the chorus of 'She Will Be Loved' because that's all she can think to do right now. A lady comes over the P.A. system, her voice monotonous as she announces that the flight from LA to New York is boarding.

"Where are you? Cat are you leaving?" Beck shouts.

Cat sings louder, and now people are looking at her like she's crazy.

"Cat tell me where you are? I'll come to you and we can talk, okay? You don't have to do this."

"Bye, Aladdin."

Beck opens his mouth to speak, but is cut off by the sound of the dial tone. He listens to it for a bit before he throws the phone against the wall.

.

In the end, Cat realizes that perfect girls get fairy tale endings and crazy girls get nothing. Always.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** Can you tell that the song Beck sang in McDonald's was She Will Be Loved? Because it was.


End file.
